The California
Supreme Court yesterday upheld the death sentence for a gang member convicted
in the 1995 shooting death of a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy.

With Chief
Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye writing the unanimous opinion, the court rejected
claims of prejudicial error on the part of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge
Robert Perry at the trial of Freddie Fuiava, a member of the Young Crowd.

Fuiava was
convicted of the first degree murder of Deputy Sheriff Stephen Blair and the
attempted murder of his partner, Robert Lyons. The jury found as special
circumstances that the defendant knowingly murdered a peace officer who was in
the performance of his duties and that he committed the murder in order to
avoid arrest.

Blair was
driving near Ham Memorial Park in Lynwood , according to testimony, when he
noticed Fuiava and another man who had apparently spotted the deputies and
tossed what appeared to be a gun into a yard. Blair got out of his vehicle and
was shot in the chest, returning fire despite his wounds.

Fuiava claimed
that he shot Blair in self-defense. He contended that the deputy was a member
of the Vikings, a group of Lynwood deputies who worke Viking tattoos which the
defense claimed operated as a street gang itself, terrorizing alleged gang members
without cause.

Viking Explained

Present and
former Lynwood deputies have said that Vikings is simply a nickname for those
assigned to that particular station, and have denied allegations of brutality
and racism. But several deputies were named as defendants in a civil rights
action based on events that occurred in 1990 and 1991, which the county
eventually settled.

At Fuiava’s
trial, the defense attempted to introduce evidence from that case, as well as
other evidence of misconduct by Lynwood-area deputies, claiming it was relevant
to the self-defense claim. Perry sustained the prosecution’s objection, and the
chief justice agreed yesterday that the evidence was inadmissible.

“We agree with
the trial court that the connection between the excluded evidence and the
issues at this trial was unduly tenuous,” Cantil-Sakuye wrote.

Perry, she
noted, allowed the defense to present evidence of alleged misconduct by Blair,
and of specific acts of alleged misconduct by deputies against Fuiava and two
of his associates, but excluded testimony about the lawsuit or about misconduct
by other deputies against other gang members.

The chief
justice also explained that evidence about the lawsuit could not be offered to
prove the truth of the allegations, because of the hearsay rule.

“In sum, the
trial court’s ruling was not beyond the bounds of reason,” Cantil-Sakauye said.
“It was reasonable for the trial court to find that any probative value in
admitting the lawsuit evidence (proffered with the hope of supporting an inference
that because other deputies had engaged in unlawful activities unrelated to
defendant — or the lawsuit so alleged — it was more likely Blair acted
unlawfully in the shooting incident) was minimal and would have been
substantially outweighed by the risk of jury confusion and undue consumption of
time.”

No Error

Cantil-Sakauye
also concluded that there was no error in admitting evidence, in the guilt
phase, that the defendant had previously been convicted of armed assault and
that he was on parole at the time of the shooting. The evidence was relevant,
the jurist explained, because it tended to prove the prosecution theory that
Fuiava shot Blair because he was afraid of being sent back to prison for
possesing a firearm while on parole.

The trial judge
did err, the chief justice wrote, in failing to instruct the jury that a deputy
sheriff’s testimony that Fuiava told him he had shot two rival gang members
required independent corroboration. The error was harmless, however, the chief
justice said.

She explained:

“In light of the
circumstances of the shooting of Deputy Blair, defendant’s guilt phase
testimony placing the blame for what happened upon the victim, his penalty
phase testimony expressing apparent unwillingness to accept responsibility for
the crimes of which the jury had convicted him, and the other evidence of
defendant’s undeterred history of violence involving additional shootings,
including his pleas to two, we cannot say there is a reasonable possibility the
jury would have reached a different verdict if it had not considered Deputy
Kaono’s testimony regarding defendant’s uncorroborated confessions to two
other, ultimately nondescript, shootings.”

The appeal was
argued by Michael Satris, by appointment, for the defendant and Deputy Attorney
General Thomas C. Hsieh for the prosecution.

The high court
yesterday also upheld the death sentence imposed by a Riverside Superior Court
judge on Sonny Enraca for a double murder that occurred in Mira Loma in 1994.

Witnesses said
Enraca shot and killed Dedrick Gobert, 22, an aspiring actor from Inglewood who
had appeared in the movie “Boyz in the ‘Hood,” and Ignacio Hernandez, 19, and
shot and paralyzed Gobert’s girlfriend, Jenny Hoyn, in a gang-related argument
following an illegal street race.

The defense
argued on appeal that Enraca, who confessed to a detective while being booked,
had invoked his right to counsel while being questioned by another detective
earlier. But Justice Carol Corrigan, writing for a unanimous court, said the
defendant’s decision to confess to the second detective, which Enraca said he
made because the second detective was more respectful than the first and
because he felt that the truth was going to come out regardless, was entirely
voluntary and was given despite the second detective’s warning that he could
not talk to Enraca because he had asked for a lawyer.

The cases are People
v. Fuiava, 12 S.O.S. 548, and People v. Enraca, 12 S.O.S. 587.